The Big Agency
Week 1
Unfortunately I was unavailable to attend week 1, however I was able to catch up with the work via moodle. We were set the task of writing a brief paragraph or two on what motivates us; I wrote how I find it compulsory to work to the best of my ability and how some of my motivations (in terms of university and career opportunities) can be seen as quite materialistic.
In preparation for week 2 I also completed a Belbin Roles test. in which I found out that my main team roles are chairman, explorer and team player.
Week 2
This week we looked into the team theories which would help us with coming together and working together to take on the projects for potential clients. We looked at Bruce Tuckman's model (1965) and examined the stages of a team, going from the formation straight through to performing. We also looked at a contrasting model, Hersey and Blanchard's situational leadership model (1977), which instead suggests a team develops and matures overtime.
We formed a group, made up of myself, Jill, Callum, Nife and Robert; we discussed the belbin tests that each member had taken and went through each others strengths and weaknesses. Now that we had a team, it was time to select our top five projects which we would plan to pitch for.
The general workflow during the week leading up to our presentation seemed fluid, the contributions from each team member were coming in and the presentation was starting to look well formed and almost complete.
Week 3 - Pitch week
After agreeing a suitable time to meet, rehearse and come together one last time before presenting, we were down to 3 members. Jill had organised the presentation well and was absent due to other commitments, which we had taken into account and planned for, however, Robert did not show up, and after hours of trying to get into contact, came to the conclusion that we would be without him. This however, caused a serious problem, Roberts section of the presentation was seen to be very important, and included information and knowledge known only to him, although we had slides that contained notes, the group was thrown off and lost the ability to present. This caused us to lose our first choice client and instead received what was left, this however, could be seen as a silver lining.
The group was given the opportunity to work for Smoking Gun PR, based in Manchester. The brief, which I must admit was overlooked by our group, was interesting, full of opportunities and most importantly, now ours. After Email correspondence between the team, Bex and Robert, we decided we felt best working apart from Robert and met up with Shan Shan, where we introduced her to the team.
Week 4
Unfortunately, I was off University with illness this week, although catching up with our group, it appeared we were on track and working well with our new member Shan Shan, she brought a lot of initiative to the table and good ideas. The team worked through the brief in detail, as to get a greater understanding of the task, the client and what was being asked of us. The brief set by Smoking Gun PR is for a content marketing plan, to boost the newsletter sign ups and traffic through their contact us page. This interesting brief will bring us into contact with an established PR agency, which being PR students, is a great opportunity, as well as access to their social medias in which we will be creating the images, blogs, posts etc that will act as the 'call to arms' (the message that will encourage people to sign up and contact the agency).
Week 5
Today's Big Agency was based around project planning, risk assessment/management and stakeholder analysis, an important part of our project. Project management can make or break a project, so it was very important to take in everything we could and apply it to our own work.
Our group this week was made up of Shan Shan, Callum and myself, with Jill and Nife away, as well as no reply from our client, the three of us complete what we can with the risk management and stakeholder analysis.
Week 6
This week was the first of our stand up meetings - this is where everyone (all groups included) stand up and share where they are and how their projects are going; this gives each group the opportunity to hear from others and potentially receive another view on something they were unsure about. I found this very interesting and actually very helpful, being the only group having contact issues with our client, the other groups offered up solutions that we had not thought out. From there, we were shown a milestones list and given the rest of the afternoon to bring ourselves up to date on the list and finish off what had not been done. Dr Bex Lewis went through my Personal Development Plan with me and pointed me in the right direction, I found her input valuable as the PDP is the basis for my PDR which will be handed in during the last week of term.
As a group, we came together and uploaded the work we had onto Google Documents as to give access to every member. Since joining with Shan Shan, I have found our group working well, regardless of our belbin roles indicating that we may clash, both being executives.
week 7
This week, the stand up meeting proved very useful, as we had still not heard back from our client, not only did we receive interesting ideas and potential solutions to our problems from other groups, but Bex stepped in and told us that she will help us get in touch with our client, and that we should CC her into any contact made. This week in our group we were shown the ethics forms that we will need to be completed in order for our research to get underway, Jill stepped up to fill out the ethics forms for the group. As weeks go, I feel as if this was one of our quieter weeks, as we had still not heard back from Smoking Gun, the group was low on moral, which was worsened by the news that all other groups had been in contact with their client. This moral drop affected this weeks performance and slowed down the work process for the Friday afternoon session,
Week 8
This week we finally heard back from Smoking Gun, I was emailed by Gio, who informed me they had not received any messages from us, he congratulated us on receiving the project and offered us the opportunity to meet with him at the SG office next week, as they are exceptional busy this week. We decided on the time we could all attend and scheduled a meeting for Friday 2nd December, next week, at 10am. This good news brought a sigh of relief to the group as we could now finalize the brief and ask the questions relevant to assisting the completion of the project. Our group did not attend this weeks Friday session as we had very important deadlines, however finally having a meeting scheduled with Gio is a major milestone.
week 9 - Meeting with Smoking Gun PR
This week, with Jill and Nife being unavailable, Shan Shan, Callum and myself met with Gio at the Smoking Gun PR office. As the leader, I felt it was my responsibility to make sure the team was prepared for the meeting, to make sure of this, I brought along meeting notes that shown Gio, where we were, what we were planning on doing, how we were going to do it and how we were going to ensure quality. Gio was impressed by how prepared we were, which in turn raised the moral of the group. I also prepared a set of questions for Gio, to give us more information on Smoking Gun, their audience and what they already had in place (i.e social media accounts, website etc.). We learned that smoking gun, although they often deal with B2C clients, they wanted to raise awareness of their B2B services. We would measure the success of our content marketing plan by the number of newsletter signups and the amount of people contacting them by telephone via their 'contact us'.
It was very interesting meeting Gio and seeing a PR agency office for the first time, and I felt that the meeting went very well.
I did not attend the afternoon session due to family commitments back home, although I feel that I had set our team up well with the meeting notes that were prepared. Gio, although he went through each question during the meeting, also typed up the answers to the questions and emailed them over, allowing the others to bring Nife and Jill up to date and take another step forward to starting the project.
week 10 - Final Week
Before the lesson this week, the group got together to design our questionnaire that will be used to interview Smoking Guns clients, we came up with a list of questions, that when added to a reworded and amended version of the questions put to Gio last week, gave us all that we needed to ask to understand the relationship between Smoking gun and their clients.
In the class this week, Jill had completed the ethics forms and had them ready to submit, Bex came to our group and discussed our questions with us, where she too suggested amending and using our previous questions for Gio. During this afternoon, I made contact with Gio to discuss the possibility of receiving some contact details for a variety of clients, that Smoking Gun feel comfortable with us interviewing. Gio agreed, however requested a copy of the questions, so that he could sign off on them before letting us loose with their clients. Professionalism will be a major priority when interviewing clients, as as we are interviewing them in the name of Smoking Gun, Gio must check that our questions are suitable, which is of course understandable.
This has been a very enjoyable term and I looking forward to diving into the project in January.
